


that i should rise and you should not.

by vasnormandy



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: MAJOR spoilers for 102/103, dead-but-deathless champion vax ferrying his family to What Comes Next? yes fuck lets go, i'm working some shit out. ive already made myself cry twice writing this.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2018-11-23 02:15:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11393268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vasnormandy/pseuds/vasnormandy
Summary: i'll gently rise and i'll softly call: goodnight and joy be with you all.  ||  all things reach an end. the end is where vax'ildan stands, waiting with open hands.





	1. Chapter 1

teach me how to say goodbye, rise up, rise up -

 

* * *

 

 

he is given minutes after vecna falls. minutes, that's all, precious bits of time accounted for by no deal or bargain struck, minutes of life gifted rather than life borrowed. it's strange, an incredible weight lifted from his soul, no debt left to be paid - continuing on by the grace of his lady, who he can feel at the edge of his mind like the burning that led him to his target, but not painful, no. soft, a comfort. a caress. she is with him. he only has minutes.

to see the hope in vex'ahlia's eyes - he almost wishes away those minutes, almost wishes he'd returned to dust the second the last scrap of fight left their enemy. she is so happy, for a moment, smiling and out of breath as tears of joy well in her eyes, her face smudged with dirt and blood. her hands are on his shoulders, patting as though to assure herself of his solidity, _you're still here, you're - you're not gone, you're okay_ \- and he has to take her by her arms, stop her grasping at him, make her look at him. _no. no, stubby, look at me. look at me. this is it._

so quickly her euphoria dissolving into dread and weeping, bitter saltwater choking her voice, pleading with him or his patron to _stay, no, stay, please, leave him, i'll do anything, i'll - please, don't, i'll do anything -_

she's forgetting. for years they have had only one life between them, and they have both drawn from it for so much longer than they were meant to. this was always a trade.

even now there is no buyer's remorse.

he kisses her forehead, her temples, the top of her head, all across her cheeks and he can taste the salt of her tears and the dullness of dirt and the iron of blood and _he's been so alive,_ he's been so alive, and she will be for so long. he makes her promise.

he does not let go of her, but keeps a hand anchored with hers when he turns to keyleth, silent in her tears. _so no zephra, huh?_   he feels his heart crack. they both knew it could only be for so long, but he did not mean to leave her so soon. she kisses him, soft and sweet, like when they were so much younger. her hair blocks out the sun, gives the world a red tint, soft as spun gold when he touches it. _i love you._

_i love you too. so much. i love you so much._

_tell shaun -_

_i know. i will. i love you._

a hand at the back of her head, the nape of her neck, to pull her down to where he can reach her, where he can press his lips to her brow. _g'night, kiki._

percy comes next, takes him by the face and kisses his cheek, just at the corner of his lips. he feels stubble scratch against his skin. _you'd better get a shave before you kiss my sister with that mouth, freddie,_ and in spite of her tears he hears vex'ahlia give a choked half-laugh before she buries her head in his shoulder.

 _you absolute bastard,_ percy says, and his voice is level still, level always, but he is so quiet and there is a kind of heartbreak in his face and against his cheek vax'ildan can feel his hand trembling. _i'll see you at the end of it all, then?_

_i'll be there._

_good._ terse now, restrained, holding himself in, percy turns away.

pike and scanlan are there, and vax goes to the ground in an instant, down to their level with vex crumpling after and immediately pike has engulfed him in an embrace, her warmth a radiance around him, her arms strong around his neck. _safe travels out there, stringbean._ her throat is almost too tight for the words, but against his jaw he can feel the smile pressing itself into her face. still smiling, for all of them.

he pulls back, plants a kiss on the tip of her nose and follows it up with a bump from his knuckle. _love you, pickle. take care of them._

_i will. i love you._

scanlan comes silently, for once without words. he only puts his arms around vax from the side and dips his head until it rests atop his feather-plated shoulder, breathes in deeply. vax's hand finds the gnome's back, rubs once up and down. _you be good, alright?_

 _if that's your last wish, tell me you're not actually expecting me to follow it._ the joke falls flat, but vax laughs anyway, a dry and hollow echo, and turns his head to bury a kiss in scanlan's hair. _you'll be good enough._

grog has been hanging back, hesitant, but the second vax looks up to meet his eyes he drops to his knees and throws his vast shape around them - all four of them, vax and vex and pike and scanlan, pulls them fiercely to his chest. _don't you fucking go now. don't you go._

 _sorry, big guy._ he rests his head against grog's collar. _hey. you kick some ass for me, alright? and know that when you do, i'm right there with you, so you can't take credit for any of it._

 _oh, fuck off._ it's halfhearted, half-strangled. vax smiles, pats his shoulder. _love you._

in the embrace that grog has created vex'ahlia has nestled herself against vax'ildan, curling into the shape of her brother like matched pieces, like they haven't quite since they were children, sleeping in the same bed. his arm is around her, holding her to him, and he rocks gently, as much as he can in the goliath's restraint.

 _hey._ keyleth has gone to her knees beside them, and instantly grog lets go and folds her in, tugging her tight against the twins. she drops her head into the hollow of vax's neck, finds vex's hand to thread her fingers through hers. moments later grog pulls percy in, his warm body in his blue coat, and they are complete. he is complete.

turning his head, blinking to clear his vision, he can see across the wreckage of the battlefield. amid swaths of gods their two oldest allies have stood by them, fought by them, as they always have. they stand back, together, holding their wounds, holding each other. kima is biting her lip, her body tense, her brow all scrunched. she nods to him, and mouths _you did good._ allura says nothing, only smiles proudly with eyes full of tears. it's enough.

 _i love you,_ he breathes, and he can feel the heat of his own tears now, at last. _i love you all. i love you._

this is how he dies, vax'ildan, one last time. at the heart of all his family's arms he closes his eyes. he finds the warmth at the edge of his mind and he goes to it.

he has already left the premises of his body when the wind picks up and he dissolves. from ash, again to ash, filtering through the spaces between the bodies of his friends. the deathwalker's ward goes with him, and the knives at his belt, all turned to dust and scattered. when vex'ahlia has finished sobbing herself into incoherence, when she is awake enough to look at what has remained in her lap in the space he has vacated, she finds only a handful of small ceramic beads once braided into his hair.

 

* * *

 

 

he steps up onto the surface of her palm, shadow feet, astral body. there is nothing here but her, her swimming hair like a cosmos, her great porcelain countenance before his eyes.

"so that's it," he says.

her chin inclines, just barely. a nod.

"it didn't hurt."

 _I WOULD NOT HARM YOU._   her voice, as always, is everywhere, around him and within him. there is nothing here but her. there is nothing here but them.

"but it's over?" he feels different, very different, but not dead. this isn't what it felt like, the past two times. this is something new.

 _YES._   she watches him through night black eyes, each one greater than he is tall. _YOU ARE WITH ME. NOW AND ALWAYS._

it's bittersweet, but only for the sake of those he loves, for how he knows they mourn. all he feels within himself is peace. relief. so long as his sister is in pain, far from him, it's hard to savor it. "they may not accept that." _she may not._

the raven queen's mask remains as unchanging as it ever has, but vax'ildan could swear he gets a hint of a smile. _I AM WELL AWARE OF THE... IMPERMANENCE WITH WHICH YOUR FRIENDS REGARD DEATH. IT IS ADMIRABLE, TO LOVE SO GREATLY. BUT THEY CANNOT REACH YOU HERE._

"they may try." twenty-five thousand gold in diamonds, isn't it? to toss away in desperation, a rope thrown into an abyss that he has sunk beyond. he cannot reach. she'd kill him for making her waste that kind of money. "if they come knocking... tell them it's alright."

again he feels her smiling, but gentler now, not in amusement but in love. it's a warm tide that washes through him, fills every empty space in him. he is here. he is done. he can let go now.

he closes his eyes.

"i'm ready," he says.

he isn't aware of a change in the ground below him, but then the palm that he had stood on is laid against his cheek, small as human hands and soft as silk, cupping his face. "rest now, my champion," she says, and her voice is only a voice. "you have done so much. rest now until your burdens fade to memory. come morning i will have need of you."


	2. Chapter 2

i may not live to see our glory -

 

* * *

 

 

vax doesn't know how long he sleeps after he drifts into warm darkness under the raven queen's cold touch. but when he wakes, he wakes in a bed.

his bed. it takes him a moment to realize that, to process. this bed has not been the bed that comes to mind when he thinks of his bed in some time, but it is definitively his, and those are his leathers thrown over the chair, and those are his boots of haste that his sister never did give back. he touches his chest - finds soft, cotton sleep clothes. he touches the other side of his mattress and does not find keyleth.

he pushes the blankets off, meets the thin carpet with his bare feet and rises and treads across the length of the room - to place his hand against the stone walls of greyskull keep. he finds a window, drags the curtain aside, peers out. over the unbroken skyline of emon, the sun is just rising. its glow frames the outline of allura's ivory tower, as tall and proud as it was before the conclave.

 _what the fuck,_ he thinks.

he pulls on some familiar leather armor and laces up his boots before he ventures out. his first stop is straight down the hall, his sister's room. it is comfortingly cluttered, her items strewn in what she claims as organized chaos. nothing she values too highly is present. neither is she. glances into other rooms reveal the same, scenes laid out just as his friends would have left them, details he'd thought he'd forgotten. in pike's chambers he steps on a few wilting rose petals. in percy's he finds spare casings for the pepperbox and turns them over in his fingers.

it's instinct and not thought that pulls his hand up to his ear, to the hard familiar shape of the earring that hangs there. that's what they do, when they don't know where the rest of them are. check in. call out. he toys with the earring for a moment before he clears his throat, says, "vex?"

a pause. no answer. he paces to the end of the hall. "hey, guys? vex?" calm. casual. "i woke up, you're all fucking gone. somebody want to let me in on what's going on?"

a longer wait. still silence.

he knows. he remembers his death. he knows there is no response coming. that is just about all he knows, at the present moment, and in the familiar setting it's hard not to expect that in the next second he'll hear scanlan's clear and teasing voice in his ear, or see keyleth's beautiful shape round the corner. but he knows. he's gone.

 _i'm ready,_ he said.

he goes down to make some fucking coffee.

she's waiting there. missing is the expressionless mask, her face as cold and pale as ceramic, her eyes as perfectly black - but the features are human, present, not distant, and her lips are pursed, her eyelids draped just slightly. her hair spills over her body and down to the floor but it is as still as his, and does not swim in a sea of stars as he is accustomed to. her cloak is gone, her ornate garb, all only echoed in a simpler black dress. she is sitting at the kitchen table, her forearms flat on the surface before her.

it is horrendously juxtaposed. it is so out of place. it is terrifyingly mundane.

vax goes into a bow.

she lifts her gaze to him, dark and piercing. "my champion," she acknowledges, and her voice is thick with fondness. "you look rested."

"i feel..." exhausted, he plans to say, but a glance inside himself and he knows that is not true. that is the truth he is used to, the truth he has lived. it's gone now, replaced with softness and lightness and a grounded sense of ease. "yes."

"i imagined you would sleep longer." her fingers dance idly on the table, long nails like dark claws. "you are always a welcome surprise."

"if you'll allow me, my lady -" he rises, takes a step forward. "where are we?"

"i am everywhere. you?" she lifts her chin, looks upwards. "it appears to be your friends' former keep."

"greyskull." the acknowledgment is a hollow whisper. "i know that. why have you brought me here?"

for a fraction of a half of a moment she is gone, and so is he, and all is swimming with blackness and pinpoints of light, and he can see the feywild, and the hells, and the shores of the island of renewal, and whitestone, and syngorn and byroden and vex'ahlia, and all of this at once, and his feet never leave the stone floor of greyskull's kitchen, and then all solidifies again. the raven queen drags a nail along the table, leaves a scratch in the wood. he blinks and the mark is gone. "i haven't," she says softly. "this place is your doing."

"mine?"

a nod. "a familiar place. a home projected."

"then - where are we? really."

he does not see her rise, but she is at his side and his hand is in hers, and then he is weightless and blind and tumbling without motion, and there is water in his lungs and he cannot tell if the light he sees is real or an illusion as his brain is squeezed tight in his skull, and all that he could ever know and all that he has ever felt is pressing in on him from every side - and then is gone. he sees a thread, shimmering, drifting, and he finds the will to form a solid body, a solid hand, to reach and to take hold of it. the second he touches it, greyskull returns - the courtyard now, the fortress doors open and the gates locked shut. he raises his gaze and half expects to see jarrett patrolling the battlements. he looks behind him and the raven queen stands in her godly glory, her height matching that of the keep.

"this is the astral sea," she says, and her words surround him and create him and fill him again. they do not come from her; he can locate no source by sound. they simply are.

"is that where we've spoken before?" he asks. "it was never that -"

"overwhelming," she finishes, and clasps her hands before her. "every soul that swims between the living and the dead swims the astral sea. before we have always spoken in a version of the sea created by my power. we stand now in a tide made by your mind."

"why?" that is all he can think to ask.

she is quiet for a moment. "it is meant to bring some small comfort."

he looks around him, scans the aching old place, the memories and the aching it leaves in his heart. they were so happy here, and for so short a time. "it does," he says, and his voice is quiet enough that were she not what she is he doubts she could hear him from all the way up there. "and... much sadness as well."

"such is the way of living things," she says, and he could swear there is a mournful melancholy in her tone.

a gentle breeze down from the cloudtop district stirs his hair. if there is something to be understood here, he thinks he is beginning to understand the smallest piece of it. they were happy here, and allura sat in her tower and worked and smiled and his sister was at his side. they were happy later, his sister in love and keyleth in love with him, zephra and whitestone and allura's ivory tower gone but allura's fingers knotted with kima's. she will be happy again, vex'ahlia, and grow old in that city with percival and half of whitestone's orphans taken in and given de rolo names. all things end. all things go.

he has had such thoughts before - _all our moments of happiness are fleeting, none of this will last._ for the first time they do not frighten him. this is as it always is. all things go.

except for him, apparently. he pauses - opens his mouth. "my lady. if you'll permit me."

she is silent. waiting, he thinks, for the question to follow.

he will not keep her in suspense. "the astral sea is... a space of transition. for a soul before it has passed on. will i - not pass on?"

"you are by my side," she replies. "that was the bargain struck."

"i know," he says quickly, and nods, "and i have no complaints. you've given me..." _my sister lives. my sister lives. that is all i have ever asked. that is a debt which to my heart can never be repaid._ "so much. but i..." those they've lost. those he's lost. he thinks he has forgotten his mother's face. in death he wishes a chance to prove himself wrong.

she looks down to him now, and the depth of her eyes stuns him speechless. "this is no prison," she murmurs, and gestures with her hand, and he feels a gentle brush against his cheek. "you will understand, soon, what it means to me that you are here. but you are still so young." idly, he wonders what _soon_ means to an immortal being whose domain encompasses only the finish of things, and never the duration. "for now... you may move freely."

"move freely?" he cannot help that his heart skips a beat. between where? between all planes? could he - not return, but visit, slip through, see his sister, see his family, see his loves -

"to the after, and back," she clarifies, "as often as you like." a hand is extended downward to him, too giant to hope to take but not quite large enough for him to stand upon. "i can show you the way there, and you may find what you seek. and then you may return to me, and tell me what you've seen."

it strikes him, then, the likelihood that his patron has never seen the afterlife she safeguards. there's something deeply sad about that. he looks down at his hand, and then reaches up to place it against hers, at the center of her palm, just large enough to fill the well between her life line and head line. for a moment he swears he feels fingers in his hair, feels the front sections pulled and knotted back the way he likes them, and he closes his eyes.

 

* * *

 

it is a shore not unlike sarenrae's isle, and there is something fitting about that. small figures stand waiting in the surf as far as he can see. as the last shade of a wave washes over his toes he feels as though none of them are very near him at all, as though nothing in all the planes is very near him at all, as though he is alone and somehow he is alright with that. there is something so beautiful here.

he takes a step forward, and becomes aware of sounds beside him, soft splashes, pacing and grumbling, faintly familiar baritones and glints of red reflecting off the water.

"tibsy!"

the dragonborn rounds, eyes widening, mouth falling open just the barest smidge. "vax! marvelous! would you fetch your sister, please, i've been at it with this boatman for _bahamut_ only knows how long now and i believe i require some of her, ah... _particular_ talents."

he shakes his head, steps forward. tiberius is as full and real as he has ever seen him. "tibs, what the fuck are you going on about?"

"haggling!" it's all the same, the rise of his voice, the defensive _harumph._ "her haggling, that's all i meant. you really have to hear this gentleman, absolutely full of it -" vax reaches out to stall him, stop him long enough to get a breath in edgewise.

"we're the only ones here, tibs."

in response he receives a huff, a disgruntled shake of the head back and forth. "poppycock. he's just there."

"just where?"

"th-" he points, and stops. "no one. hmph. just as well."

"how - how long have you been here?" it's been so long since vorugal, draconia, the conclave, so long since percy's keen eyes spotted the weeks-dead shape of their fallen friend, so long since they honored him. has he stood here all this time, going back and forth with a boatman over gods know what? vax pauses, then, and wonders if perhaps tibs does not see the same thing he sees. is there a ferryman in draconian afterlife beliefs? these are the moments he wishes he'd paid more attention in his classes in syngorn.

tiberius snorts through his nose. "blast if i know. damned man couldn't get it through his head. a stormwind goes where he chooses, when he chooses, and he certainly doesn't pay some dastardly con to carry him off in a ramshackle dingy to places unknown." he has not changed at all. vax can feel the beginnings of tears pushing at his eyes. he reaches out, touches his arm, his scales. he is solid. he is here.

"there's no dingy, tibs. there's no places unknown. this is it."

"what are you blabbering on about now?"

"do you remember vorugal?"

it takes time, and he can watch it on his old friend's face, the way it sinks into his bones slowly, the memory crawling out. "i do," he says, at last. "yes. i do. well, then."

"he's dead." the reassurance is immediate, the need recognized. the white dragon decimated tiberius's home. vax knows only too well the feelings that evokes. "the chroma conclave, they're dealt with. they're all dead. the other side of the coin, though - so are you."

"yes, i've rather figured that out by now, thank you." he's adopted that good old lofty stormwind tone, and it doesn't irk vax. it tugs on his heart, brings him closer to tears. he has missed this pompous old lizard. tiberius has fixated his attention on his hands, turning them over and back. "are you here to fetch me, then?"

he means like pike, vax thinks, he means _bring him back_ like they've brought people back before. he can feel his throat closing. he can feel his chest tighten. "yeah. yeah, tibsy. we're going now."

it isn't a lie. tiberius meets his eyes, and he thinks he understands.

the way is across the water. he knows that in his gut as surely as he knows that he is vax'ildan of vox machina, and that he loves his sister, and that he is where he is meant to be. he gestures for tiberius to follow. he steps deeper into the surf. his leathers swim as the water rises to his waist - the deathwalker's ward, he realizes then, the adornments of his queen, traveling on and back with him. the water laps at his belly. he hears a pop and an odd sound that follows, and glances back to see tiberius following him with all the blind trust of a true friend, his bottle of air jammed into his mouth, and he feels a laugh rolling inside him.

"you don't need that," but tiberius gives him a look and does not remove the bottle, and he does not press the point.

the water is at his shoulders when he stops to wait. there is no buoyancy pushing him upward, no forces floating him, just his feet on the ocean floor like something stronger than gravity holds them there and nothing to keep him from continuing on. he takes tiberius by the wrist. he walks. he goes under.

he goes.

 

* * *

 

it is a wonderful vacation.

his mother sobs. she is so proud of the man he has become. she is so happy to hear every story of his sister that he has to tell. when he tells her about thordak she holds him and she does not let go.

there are wanderers vox machina failed to save who come to him with forgiveness. there are nameless people vox machina killed who come to him with questions, wanting to understand. he answers as best he can. they are not angry.

a veritable herd of people with faces bearing features he's seen mirrored in two siblings he knows seek him out, approach him with gratitude and recognition. most are as formal and distant as he's become accustomed to from the de rolos. a woman who looks like cass might in a few years, if cass were half a foot taller and bore an auburn rust in her hair, wants to hear every detail of the liberation of whitestone, everything he ever did alongside percival, and when he has finished she pulls him into a fierce, if stiff, embrace - _thank you._ her voice lives in the register of percival's with the fine control of cassandra and a rougher cadence entirely of her own. _he's my little brother. she's my baby sister. thank you for looking out for them._

it is a beautiful place. it is a beautiful peace. always the raven queen lives as a warmth in the edge of his head, a direction, a star to follow back. he has no concept of how long he lingers before he turns around and slips back into the sea.

she is waiting, with her hand open, palm flat, fate strings tangled through her fingers.

"my champion," she says.

"i am," he agrees. if there is something to be understood here he thinks he is beginning to understand a little more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoo man. i'm just going to keep tossing these up as i write them. the idea is one chapter for each member of vox machina, greeted after death. in other news i'm still crying


	3. Chapter 3

oh, all the comrades that e'er i had -

 

* * *

 

 

as the years pass he learns his purpose, what she requires of him. he learns to do as he did for tiberius, to be the hand outstretched and open for a faltering crossing soul. she imparts on him power and keen understanding - he knows where death wanders, where it looms, where it lingers. he thought such a thing would be burdensome. he has never felt so peaceful.

she teaches him how to bend the astral sea around his fingers and weave by his own will. he knits a humble home, a house like the one he might have grown old amid the wood walls of with keyleth, ageless beside him. beyond its doors he stretches endless woods, and rests out there as often as he does beneath his roof, nestled amid pine needles like he used to with his sister. his matron comes often, for tea and conversation. "don't you have places you need to be?" he asks her once, not impolitely but in curiosity.

"i do." she stirs sugar cubes into her tea. "i am there also. i must be. the duties of divinity call at all times, in all places. you'll learn to divide yourself. to ferry a dozen souls at once without diminishing, to rest and work in tandem."

"sounds like a godly sort of power."

"it is."

"i'm not a god."

her cool expression turns to him, her voidlike eyes. "you're not a mortal."

he tries sometimes, after that, to throw a fraction of himself back to rest in the zephra of his heart while the rest fulfills her tasks. he has not yet succeeded. it will take more time, he thinks, a flexibility his essence has not yet softened enough to accommodate. time he has in spades. for now he carries only the most distraught of souls - only those which fret within the astral sea unable to press onward, and place stress on the delicate balance his queen is tasked to maintain. he is a warm welcome, a friendly smile, a guide. he's good at it.

he knows the ebb and flow of death, the sea he has now joined with, and he knows a day before it happens. he asks for her permission, and is granted it.

he finds the soul. he stands and waits. in the moment of transition, the dying spark, he does what he has come to do with everyone he ferries, and has found it a good comfort: he hands the reins of the astral plane over to the subconscious of the soul and watches a world spring into vivid color around him.

he believes these are the mountains around vasselheim, though it's been a long, long time since he's seen this place - those who inhabit the cradle of faith, he's found, usually pass through the current with ease, safely ferried by the strength of their belief. the trees are sparse, the ledges craggy, and far below vax'ildan can see the very temple that his dear friend excavated and rebuilt by her own sweat and labor, a shrine of sarenrae gleaming with a glory he never got to see it in.

seated on a low rock, back hunched and shoulders curled in, he sees his charge. he cannot keep the smile from his face as he clambers to settle in beside the hulking shape of grog strongjaw, no less imposing in his age.

he is a sight to see - having reached an elderly stage which few goliaths do. he has kept his beard, but its wiry black color has paled to a dull scraggly gray; his tattoos, too, bear softer color, as though faded by years in the sun. lines press deep into his face, and though he retains the mass of his body his skin is not so tight to the muscle in some places. the belt of dwarvenkind remains notched around his waist. he has lived a long, good life.

"hey, big man."

grog looks up with only vague interest, having been seemingly captivated by the half-sun dipping beneath the distant skyline of the city. "oh. 'ey, vax." the gruff voice - so familiar, tempered by age which has added a rough and raspy string beneath it - his friend, it summons up a stinging in his eyes, tears he has not shed in many, many years. the goliath has returned his gaze to the sunset before it seems to strike him that something is not right. "wait," he says slowly. "wha' th' fuck," and vax laughs and reaches high to clap him on the shoulder.

"welcome to the hereafter, buddy," he says, his smile carried on his words like a song on the wind.

grog huffs, and his wizened shoulders rise and drop. "well, shit." his hand comes up to shield his eyes as he squints straight into the sun. "is this heaven, then? 'cause, i'm no' knockin' it, but, like - i tho' it'd be shinier. more large women."

_mother of rest,_ he has missed his friends.

he pats grog's hand, cherishes the warm feeling of the wrinkled, weathered skin loose over his knuckles, the beauty that is to live and to die. he thinks, not for the first time, of osysa's mate, the name, the aging spell that left a new maturity pressed into his face at the near-doubling of his years - a sneak look into a future which, at the time, he thought he had. _it's not bad!_

he misses keyleth.

"how is everyone?" he asks, as awareness of the empty silence he has left comes to him. he's only gotten worse at conversation since his pool of frequent company was reduced to one chronically isolated goddess.

grog swings his legs, kicks up a pebble from the dust and sends it tumbling down the hills. "everybody's good," he mumbles. "i think. yeah, everybody's good. pike's doin' good."

a smile spreads unbidden, but welcome - oh, he _does_ miss pike, that healing light, the dearest friend he ever found who did not share his face. "yeah? what's she up to?"

to answer, grog points downward, to the shining buildings of the sixth district, the rising spires of pike's temple. "been a lot o' construction an' shit," he explains. "busy stuff. she don't live down there, though, she's got th' house in westrunn."

"scanlan?"

"yeah, they go' married."

"oh, thank fuck, finally."

"i know, righ'?" the animated tone that enters grog's voice, the way his back straightens - the familiarity of it aches in the most wonderful way. "it was beau'iful. i carried scanlan."

"down the aisle?"

"on m' hand." he holds his palm out flat to demonstrate, its mass lessened slightly but still wide and meaty, plenty of space for the small shoes of a snappily dressed gnome who stands at a skinny two foot six. the thought tightens his throat.

"you ain't answered m' question, y' know," grog announces, and interrupts his thoughts.

"sorry?" he pauses. "oh. no. no, this isn't heaven, grog."

"huh," the goliath muses, before vax can wander his way into a proper explanation. "wh' 'bout - is it the other place, then?"

"the other -- the _hells?"_ his own indignation is enough to summon a full and joyful laugh, but grog is looking at him with such an absolutely earnest expression and oh, oh, he's missed this man! "grog," he begins, slowed but still amused. "we've _been_ to the hells. you have seen the hells."

"yeah, bu' -- no' _all of 'em,_ righ'?" his wide-eyed honesty, his vulnerable inquiries. "there's, erm - there's like - there's more 'n two. um -" grog lifts both his hands into his own field of vision, all ten fingers extended - closes one fist, leaving five - puts up a pointer finger, a middle finger, a ring finger, for six, seven, eight, and then in a moment of doubt furrows his brow and closes his entire open hand to leave three.

vax's voice fills with such warmth, such affection. "still not so hot on the numbers, there, buddy?"

"i'm readin' chapter books now," grog answers.

"what, with no pictures or anything?"

"yeah," he affirms. "well, sometimes there's pictures, bu' most o' the time that's 'cause pike drew next t' th' words." oh, that must be a sight. he hopes she's left the proper learning-to-read books unmarred for the possibility of future use - he's seen pike's doodles. they're rarely appropriate for the eyes of children.

he places his hand on grog's back - gently, not a friendly, sportsmanlike clap, but a softer gesture. "i'm really proud of you," he tells him. "and - no. this isn't hell. just a kind of in-between. is th- _that's_ where you got to from a lack of immediately visible large women? _oh, this must be hell?"_

"well. yeah."

a laugh fizzles, captured in his mouth as he rises to his feet, his hand on his friend's back moving up to brace on his shoulder. "glad you haven't changed too much, grog," he says. "now - come on, up, on your feet. we've got a walk ahead of us."

"you gotta walk to get to heaven?"

"if you want to do it right."

he grumbles, and vax can see the stiffness in his body - hidden as he'd sat, but rising now to betray his age as he lumbers to his feet. vax gestures, and a stony path cuts its way down the mountainside, away from vasselheim. they will follow it until the replicated landscape of issylra blends seamlessly into an imagined fabrication of terrain that exists nowhere, a base imitation of the material plane for his purposes in the astral, and they will walk that path until they come to the sea. with each step, he suspects, grog will slough off years like shed snakeskin, the passage of time falling away from his body until he is left his truest self, his innate self, the representation not of how his mind remembers he last was but of how his heart knows him to be.

the path is wide enough for two to tread in tandem. vax raises an eyebrow, and grog moves slowly to his side, and lets him take his wizened hand and guide him through the first descent.

"what you've got to tell me, grog," he begins, with cheer to fill the stagnant air, "is - how many nieces and nephews do i have?"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> grog can't count vax he doesnt know


End file.
